Tampere Regional Public Transport Committee rejected our claim for ticket reform
We have submitted a claim for a revised decision regarding the ticket reform decided by the Tampere Regional Public Transport Committee.
The Public Transport Committee decided in the late autumn that students will no longer receive student discounts on public transport value tickets and that the student discount is only available to the 30-day season ticket in Nysse mobile app, not on a bus card.
We worked actively to ensure that the reform would not undermine the equality of the ticket system. We contacted politicians and published a statement about the reform together with the Student Union of Tampere University of Applied Sciences. Aamulehti made a news article about our statement. Read our statement published on October on our website.
Despite our advocacy work, major flaws remained in the reform. The abolition of the student discount in value tickets will reduce student’s already low livelihoods. Moving the 30-day seasonal ticket only to the mobile app contains many risks: there is no information on the reliability or accessibility of the app. There is no assurance that sufficient customer service resources have been allocated for the change process. When the student discount feature in the app was tested, many of the testers found the system complicated. Also, the app doesn’t work on all smartphones and requiring a suitable smartphone to utilize a tax-funded service does not treat students equally.
Thus, in late November TREY board decided to submit a claim for a revised decision to the Public Transport Committees decision. The Committee decided to reject our claim so the new ticket system is putting into service at 4.1.2021.
Picture credits: Wille Nyyssönen, Raitiotieallianssi